Kevin Miller looks out of the passenger window of his friend's car as they sit in stuck traffic during a winter storm Wednesday Feb. 12, 2014, in Raleigh, N.C. SCOTT SHARPE, THE NEWS & OBSERVER/AP

PHILADELPHIA (CBS NEWS) -- The latest storm to roll off nature's assembly line during this bustling
winter spread heavy snow and sleet along the Northeast corridor Thursday, while
utility crews in the ice-encrusted South labored to restore power to hundreds
of thousands of shivering residents.

The storm shuttered schools and
businesses, made driving scary, grounded thousands of flights and made more
back-breaking work for people along the East Coast, where shoveling out has
become a weekly chore - sometimes a twice-weekly one.

"Snow has become a four-letter
word in Delaware County and all along the East Coast this winter," said
Tom McGarrigle, chairman of the Delaware County Council, in suburban
Philadelphia.

Baltimore awoke to 15 inches of snow.
Washington, D.C., had at least 11, and federal offices and the city's two main
airports were closed.

Philadelphia had nearly 9 inches by
early morning, making it the fourth 6-inch snowstorm of the season - the first
time that has happened in the city's history. Harrisburg, Pa., had at least 8
inches.

Winter storm warnings were issued for
much of the Eastern Seaboard, including Georgia, where an ice storm warning
remained in place. Up to 14 inches was possible in northwest New Jersey, and
New York City and its suburbs could get 8 to 12 inches. Up to 18 inches of snow
was forecast for central and western Massachusetts, and Portland, Maine, could
see 8 or 9 inches.

More than 800,000 homes and businesses
lacked power in several Southeastern states on Thursday morning. Power
companies in the Northeast were preparing for outages.

At least 14 deaths, most of them in
traffic accidents, were blamed on the storm as it made its way across the South
and up the coast. The victims included a truck driver in Ashburn, Va., who was
working to clear snowy roads. He had pulled off the road and was standing
behind his vehicle when he was hit by a dump truck.

More than 5,200 flights were canceled
across the country, according to the website FlightAware.
Amtrak canceled some of its trains and modified schedules for others. Acela
Express trains between Washington and Boston and Northeast Regional trains
between Boston and Norfolk, Va., were operating at reduced frequency or
modified schedules.

Across the South, the storm left in
its wake a world of ice-encrusted trees and driveways and snapped branches and
power lines.

More than 200,000 homes and businesses
in the Atlanta area alone were waiting for the electricity to come back on.
Temperatures were expected to drop below freezing again overnight.

In North Carolina, where the storm
caused huge traffic jams in the Raleigh area on Wednesday as people left work
and rushed to get home in the middle of the day, National Guardsmen in
high-riding Humvees patrolled the snowy roads, looking for stranded motorists.

CBS
News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports from Raleigh that state troopers responded to more
than 2,000 accidents, with one car even bursting into flames.

Daniel Smith
found shelter at the Midway Baptist Church after his car got stuck on an icy
hill.

"It was something out
of like a zombie movie or something, all these abandoned cars on the side of
the road," Smith told Andrews.

Like
many, Smith had heard all of the warnings, but the speed and the power of the
storm caught him by surprise.

"We knew the forecast," said Smith. "We knew it was
going to be bad, but we thought, you know, once it starts to come down we'll
head home and be fine."

State Emergency Management Director
Mike Sprayberry said there was no way to estimate how many were stuck in their
vehicles.

Some roads around Raleigh remained
clogged with abandoned vehicles Thursday morning. City crews were working to
tow the vehicles to safe areas where their owners could recover them.

The procession of storms and cold
blasts - blamed in part on a kink in the jet stream, the high-altitude air
currents that dictate weather - has
cut into retail sales across the U.S., the Commerce Department reported
Thursday. Sales dipped 0.4 percent in January.